M.U.S.C.L.Eing in on MySpace...

I don't have a MySpace account.

My improv team, International Stinger, does.

I actually set it up so that we could post our shows, in case folks wanted to read our bulletins and come check us out. And also so that we would have a place for interested non-improvisers to come learn a little bit about us. (So much cheaper than paying for a website and hosting it for a year. AND paying every time you want to update something. Or having to learn how to actually program stuff.) MySpace for bands, troupes and whatnot is just the best way to get the word out about your troupe.

Or to advertise yourself, if you want to.

Me? I just don't want an individual webpage for myself. I put so much time and energy into this blog. THIS is my MySpace equivalent. It expresses who I am much more than a MySpace page ever would. And honestly, I don't think I have the energy to maintaine both of them. One of them would just wither away from lack of interest. I just know that to be true.

Especially after the day that I've had today on MySpace.

Over on the Bee Board, there was a flurry of activity around my buddy Mark's declaration that he had created a page and wanted to add as many friends as possible. Before the day was over, he had 45 some odd friends.

To add to his count, I logged into the International Stinger account and invited him, too. I looked at his collection of friends and saw a few folks that I like and wanted to link to. I sent invitations to them.
Which lead me to look around their friends and start inviting THOSE people that I know.
Which lead me to look at THEIR friends and so on.

An hour later and I LITERALLY had to stand up and walk away from the computer. I'd invited nearly 40 people to become friends with International Stinger. Some of them signed up. The rest were invitations waiting to be answered.

I recognized the feeling that I was having instantly.

In middle school, me and my buddies were OBSESSED with collecting Enormous collections of M.U.S.C.L.E. figures. These hard rubber, bright pink, oddly shaped wrestler figures. You'd get 3 or 4 to a pack and for a summer, every bit of cash that I had was spent on MUSCLE figures.

You couldn't DO anything with them. They were hard plasticized rubber and wouldn't even bend properly.

So, I provided names and personalities for them all. And I acted out their Titanic Wrestling Matches all by myself, providing narration, direction and voices for their every move. (That was the summer that I flirted with a fascination with all forms of wrestling.)

Eventually, that fad passed and I moved onto some other plastic "crack". GI Joe, I think. I traded nearly all of my M.U.S.C.L.E men for a decent sized Gi Joe starter kit and built it up from there. Even as late as 2000, when I cleaned some boxes out of my parents basement, I found a few MUSCLE figures rattling around in them. I understand that there's quite a tidy market for them, but I haven't investigated that.

The feeling that I felt from my encounter with MySpace, was the feeling that I HAD to sit there and click on MySpace profiles until I had EVERY PERSON I KNOW ON MYSPACE. I felt the onrush of purely focused, OCD attack coming on. Given the chance, I'd sit at that desk through a raging fire or a blustery tornado, as long as my computer remained linked to MySpace, allowing me to invite people onto our account.

As I said before, I pushed my chair back and stood up, stretching my back. I had lost 50 minutes to MySpace. 50 minutes irretrievably lost to the MySpace experience. Christ, I could've hammered out an entire blog entry in that time.

And I believe now, more than ever, that my not having a MySpace page is a good thing. If I had one, I'd surely neglect this blog, neglect work, neglect sleep and meals and sit at a computer, endlessly picking and repicking the "proper" 12 picturess to best represent me.

Because I "gotta collect them all"!!!

Cheers,
Mr.B